If I find a cute girl cooking down here, I swear to God…
But as I round the corner, I find Sterling standing over the stove, wearing a pair of briefs and a white tank top, a sizzling pan of bacon in front of him.
“She’s up.” He grins as he sees me come in. “I guess I can start making the eggs now. You like eggs, I hope.”
“Sure,” I reply. “How do you make them?”
“The best you’ve ever had,” he chuckles. “You all right? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”
Crap. My concern about what might have been going on down here must be plastered all over my face. I quickly smile and nod.
“I’m fine. Just still waking up, I guess.”
“Good,” Sterling says, stretching out an arm for me to slip under as he begins cracking eggs into a bowl with one hand. For a man who bought me without a second thought, he sure knows how to show affection.
I feel so strangely at home here already, standing in his kitchen, wrapped beneath his arm, watching him add the cracked eggs to a cast iron pan on the stove. He’s so warm…it’s so domestic yet also so sensual and sexy. Unlike my dad and most guys I’ve encountered in my life, he seems to know what he’s doing as he cooks for us.
“You’re pretty good at that,” I remark. “Ex-chef?”
Sterling chuckles and shakes his head. “My dad taught me before he died.”
“Oh…I’m so sorry, Sterling. I didn’t—”
“It’s all right.” He shrugs. “He was in the mob too. You’d think I’d learn better, but like father like son, I guess. I didn’t know what else to do.”
He picks up a fingerful of chopped scallions and sprinkles them into the eggs, then adds some salt and pepper as they start to come together. I don’t really know what to say and am thankful when he continues the conversation.
“Never really knew my mother, either, so it’s not like I had that loving mother’s guidance to steer me in the right direction, ya know? Tell me to go to college and become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever.”
“Well, my mother left me, so…” I look at him and shrug my shoulders. “No guarantees you would have gotten that from yours anyway.”
“True,” Sterling chuckles. “Would have been nice to at least gotten a chance, though. Could you grab us a couple plates from that cabinet there?”
“Sure!” I turn and take two cream-colored plates from where Sterling was pointing and set them on the counter beside him. He looks like a model as he lifts the pan from the stove and uses a spatula to evenly divide up the eggs, serving them up like the world’s sexiest chef. He then uses a set of tongs to add bacon to each plate and carries them both over to a table sitting by a large plate-glass window looking out into the back yard.
“Juice?” he asks.
“I’ll get it!” I volunteer, quickly finding glasses in one of the cabinets and racing to the fridge. “Orange or cranberry?”
“Orange for me,” he says.
“Good.” I smile. “Me too.”
I bring the glasses and the carton to the table and sit down for what has to be the cutest, sexiest, most surprising breakfast of my life.
“Here, come closer,” Sterling says, grabbing the leg of my chair with one hand and tugging me right up beside him like I’m as light as a feather.
God, he’s so unbelievable. If it’s not one thing it’s another with him. He just makes me feel so small, so wanted, so delicate, and so cared for in ways I’ve never felt before. This is not at all what I was expecting when he told me I would be going with him as payment for my dad’s debts.
I’m not nervous at all anymore. In fact, I feel right at home—maybe more so than I do when I’m at my real home with my dad, never knowing what bad news he’s going to bring home related to his gambling.
It’s very confusing. This is not how this should be going at all. Sterling should be a psychotic asshole, and I should be coming up with a plan on how to escape while my dad comes up with a plan on how to get me back.
But I’m not even sure if my dad is even thinking about that as much as he’s thinking about how to find himself more money to bet with.
And last night…
Last night I should have been much more nervous than I was. But somehow Sterling made me feel nice and easy and open, and everything went so well it was like I was living in a dream.
A dream much better than the one I had before he showed up in my room…
If I hadn’t ended up at Sterling’s house because of my father’s debts, I could almost fool myself into thinking that he was simply my boyfriend who I’d decided to move in with.